Yearly Archives: 2014

You've probably run into it dozens of times: you click on an interesting article headline only to be taken to content that doesn't exactly fulfill the headline's promise. Sites that have been labeled as click-bait farms, such as BuzzFeed and Upworthy, are often accused of this. However, even long-standing and reputable publishers have started using misleading headlines to get traffic.

Now, a new study shows that these headlines can have more of an effect on a reader's interpretation of an article than the text in the article itself - even if the whole article is read.

Even if you're not familiar with the term "knowledge graph," you've probably had experience with Google's Knowledge Graph technology. Whenever detailed information about your search pops up directly on the search engine results page, that's the Knowledge Graph at work. For example, a Google search for "Benjamin Franklin" returns birth and death dates, works written, images and much more in a box placed prominently on Google's results page.

Yesterday, a digital marketer noticed that song lyrics are showing up in the SERPs. This is great for users but potentially ruinous for lyrics sites.

If your business considers 13- to 17-year-olds its target audience, chances are good that you're already using social media in your marketing campaigns. Facebook is undoubtedly the king right now, but several reports have shown its teen demographic slipping. For example, a Piper Jaffray report from this October showed that Facebook popularity among teens has absolutely plummeted this year.

A new report from iStrategy Labs confirms this downward trend; however, the severity of the problem and what to do about it is still quite debatable.

Year-end lists of the top searches provide a snapshot of what people look for on the internet and how they use search engines. Such lists also provide an overview of the topics, events, issues and people that were most culturally relevant that year. For marketers, the top searches don't necessarily represent keywords to be focused on; instead, they help keep SEOs informed about search trends, audience tendencies and where - or where not - to be focusing their efforts.

Year-end lists have been released by Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Bing. While these sites vary in traffic, they're all still in the Alexa top 25.

The online marketing landscape in 2015 will look very different than it did even three or four years ago. Mobile marketing, social media and content marketing will likely continue to be some of the most important elements of a marketing campaign. A term like "email marketing," however, already sounds like an outdated technique.

Of course, experienced online marketers know that this definitely isn't the case. As marketing approaches become stretched across many different platforms and tons of content continues to be produced, email marketing will remain one of the most powerful strategies.